Monthly Archives: October 2012

Legal Plunder

Posted on October 26, 2012 | 6 comments

I found a cute little video that describes some basic foundations of freedom and liberty.

The money quote, of  course, is Bastiat’s shown above:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

I suspect that we’ve been here for awhile now.  But if you wanna check to  make sure that we’re still here, wait for someone to make the case that healthcare is a fundamental human right.  Or, even better, attack you as a cold blooded bastard for wanting a policy that would allow people to die in the street.

The same can be said for Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

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Posted in Liberty

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The Rich Will Be Poorer – But The Poor Will Also Be Poorer

Posted on October 25, 2012 | 4 comments

His words:

America’s wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success.  Take away their incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take are of the needy.

 

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Posted in Economics, Liberty

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2012 Election: Obama 271 Romney 267

Posted on October 25, 2012 | 2 comments

Razor thin margins everywhere.

Back in August I had this to say:

I’m out on a limb with Virginia and Colorado while Obama is pretty much a lock in every state going blue in the map above.

I no longer think I’m on a limb in Virginia, possibly Colorado.  But Romney seems to have stolen New Hampshire.  And I think Iowa breaks Red.

Again, there is plenty of “limbness” going on here, but…and this is a significant but, if Romney moves even one single state such as Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania, it’s over.  Going back to August again I said this:

I think Obama will carry the big Ohio and Pennsylvania states with Florida going for Mitt.

I’m now more sure of Florida and less sure of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Net/net – I am really demoralized that the Union states of Michigan and Ohio are supporting Obama as strong as they are.  The President made a clear power play there with the auto bailouts and then the ensuing bankruptcy that he totally manipulated.  Add in Wisconsin to that Union dominated list of states and you have an election dictated by Unions.

Yuck.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Mitt Romney

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Benghazi Attacks : The E-mail And The Video – What Did Obama Know

Posted on October 25, 2012 | 8 comments

Jay Carney is learning the age old lesson:

Bad news doesn’t get better with age.

It’s past beginning to look bad for Obama, it’s REALLY looking bad for Obama.

What was a slowly developing bad news story for the administration has quickly gained steam and is now looking to be a major cover up.  After the news that the administration received e-mails from the consulate just 2 hours into the attack, Obama can only be reeling:

(Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

Further, there is video footage that shows there was no protest that night in Libya:

In addition to the footage from the consulate cameras, the U.S. government is also poring over video taken from an overhead U.S. surveillance drone that arrived for the final hour of the night battle at the consulate compound and nearby annex.

Video from the compound’s cameras debunk the initial line from the Obama administration that there was a protest in front of the consulate on the night of the attacks, according to one of the U.S. intelligence officials who has seen the footage, and a senior Obama administration official familiar with what they show.

I get that assessing reports and data real time is tough and can often be wrong.  But as the days and weeks advanced, Obama continued to tell us that what happened in Benghazi was something other than what it was:

Just in this montage, the administration mentions the video at least 7 times over 6 days.  This is a massive failure in terms of obtaining the truth and an absolute failure in dealing with the American people’s faith and trust in the government.

The fact is this, the administration had reason to believe in the first 2 hours that we were dealing with a terrorist attack and certainly within the first 2 days this was crystal clear.

 

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Posted in Diplomacy, Politics: International

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Romney Rising

Posted on October 24, 2012 | 5 comments

I was reading Scott’s latest post over at World in Motion when I saw his update:

An added tidbit – Ezra Klein of the Washington Posts note that traders have been putting massive Romney bets in intrade to try to manipulate the market and make it appear Romney is rising.   Usually those upswings are short term as real investors recognize the chance for some ‘easy money’ off the manipulators.

I haven’t been over to Intrade for a few days so I thought I’d hit ’em up.

Here’s how Romney is doing since the 2st debate on October 3rd:

Romney has gone from 26 to 45 and rising.

What did Ezra have to say about the manipulation?

Here’s the backstory: On Monday night, after the debate, Barack Obama was leading Romney on Intrade by around 60 percent to 40 percent. But at around 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Romney had surged to nearly 49 percent. Was this evidence that the conventional wisdom was wrong? Had Romney actually won the debate handily? Or, alternatively, was the nosedive in the stock markets putting a dent in Obama’s re-election chances?

Or maybe it was something else. As economist Justin Wolfers pointed out on Twitter, the huge swing toward Romney appears to have been driven by a brief burst of trading, with someone spending about $17,800 to push Romney’s chances on Intrade up to 48 percent. But the surge only lasted about six minutes before other traders whittled the price back down to what they saw as a more accurate valuation. Romney’s odds of winning are, as of Tuesday morning, back at around 41 percent:

Ezra, at the writing of the article, points out that manipulation had boosted Romney’s numbers.  But even Mr. Klein acknowledges that the manipulation was corrected in 6 minutes.  It leads us to believe that the current value is the result of normal market forces.

But continuing to read the full column today, we see that Ezra has updated his post:

Update: Over at the Atlantic, Carl Wolfenden, the exchange operations manager for Intrade, says, “We checked this out for potential manipulation—it certainly fit the pattern at first glance.” But, he says, that doesn’t seem to be the case this time around. The Romney blip was apparently driven by a number of traders during an early-morning period when the market was very thin, rather than just one person.

Interesting.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Mitt Romney

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Obama Rising

Posted on October 24, 2012 | 1 comment

The President has won the last 2 debates.  Are we seeing a shift or a bubble?

 

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Posted in Elections 2012

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The Family: Socioeconomics vs IQ – The Bell Curve

Posted on October 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

The election, work and a jammed family schedule have impacted not only the amount of recent blogging but the subject matter as well.  It’s been over a month since my last installment of the impact of IQ on the conditions of all of us.

The Impact of IQ on Family Matters

I’ve gone over subjects such as poverty, education and employment.  I’ve taken an approach that first shows the impact of the socioeconomic status of the folks involved; sometimes the parents or family and sometimes the individual himself.  Then I’ve come back to show what the circumstances look like when the population has been described in terms of IQ.  So far, to me, the differences are stunning.

Today I look to continue this by checking out the family.

Marriage

Because of the massive positive impact that being married has on society, it’s important to track who is getting married, when and why.  Earlier I showed a chart that described the state of folks at 30.  And because of the natural tendency of education to suppress marriage, both high school only and college graduates were displayed.  The chart below now includes taking IQ into account:

Most likely due to the fact that college is highly tracked to IQ, the differences don’t really matter.  But looking at the IQ of individuals without college education the impact i s large.  Of those with average IQs, 80% are married by 30.  Compare this with those of very low cognitive ability and their rate of 60%.

As I mentioned before, if marriage is important, then so is divorce.  And what does the comparison show?  Look:

The trends are interesting.  As individuals become wealthier, they are more likely to end their marriages in divorce.  But in a completely opposite way and manner, as the IQ of the folks increases, their likelihood of divorce decreases.

The subject of marriage is important because of the impact to the lives of the children of those families.  Because of this importance, it is required to look at the circumstances of birth.  Specifically illegitimate births.

The data are clear.  While the impact of the SES status is important, the top to bottom difference is 10 points, the impact of the IQ is even higher.  Where SES can show a 2 to 1 ratio, IQ shows a 7 to 1 ratio.

The last comparison is that of illegitimate births to white women already below the poverty line.  The data shows that as SES status increases so does the probability that a child is born out of wedlock.  If we include IQ?

Massive.

In perhaps the most glaring demonstration of the impact of IQ, this metric shows that women with higher cognitive ability avoid births out of wedlock at remarkable levels while women with lower cognitive ability are much less likely to avoid this condition.

In each of the 4 comparisons, IQ is shown to have a positive impact on the favorable conditions expected.  In some cases moderate, in others dramatic.

Next up – we look at the impact of IQ compared to SES and welfare.

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Posted in Economics, Middle Class, Politics: National, The Bell Curve

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President Obama, There You Go Again

Posted on October 23, 2012 | 2 comments

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Obama lied his way through 3 debates, he’s out on the trail today and has been caught in another “whopper.”

Referencing Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout, Obama continued, “If you say you love American cars during a debate, but you wrote an article titled ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ — you may have Romnesia.”

Not only does Obama “forget to mention” that his plan eventually resulted in the bankruptcy of Detroit he fails to mention that Romney advocated federal assistance in that article.  The only thing that Romney objected to was the bailout; a view that in hindsight is 100% accurate.

And let’s not forget to mention that the sole beneficiary of that bailout was Obama’s union friends.

Obamnesia to be sure.

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Posted in Elections 2012

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I’ve Said It Before … Obama Is A Liar

Posted on October 23, 2012 | 7 comments

Incredibly I watched the whole debate last night.  I’m a well documented junkie now, but last night’s sleeper was just about as much as I could take.

90 minutes of boredom.  But there were some really good moments:

The first such moment is when Obama accused Romney of wanting to liquidate the auto industry.  By taking the position that the companies should have been brought through bankruptcy.  Obama said that Romney didn’t support Federal assistance.  Clearly he did.

There are more.  My next favorite is when Obama stood there, actually sat there, and said point blank that he did not support leaving troops in Iraq after the end of major conflict there.  Of COURSE Obama support that.  The condition is called Status of Forces.  And the President put Joe Biden in charge of securing it.  The fact that Joltin’ Joe couldn’t seal te deal doesn’t change the fact that Obama supported it.

On the subject of education Romney worked hard to demonstrate his state’s achievements while he was in office.  Romney mentioned the normal facts surrounding test scores, but then he moved into the “John and Abigail Adams Scholarships.”  Obama countered that fact by saying that had occurred before Romney came into office.

It’s hard to blame Obama.  He was defeated as soundly as any candidate in history during their first debate.  And last night it was Obama playing the role of challenger to Romney’s role champ.  Romney was simply playing defense and Obama was trying to … well, lie.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Mitt Romney

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If Candy Crowley Were The Moderator

Posted on October 22, 2012 | 2 comments

I’m CERTAIN she would have said, “Actually sir, it IS in there.  He did say that.”

Actually, I’m not certain she would have said that and I’m glad Bob didn’t.  But here is what Romney wrote in 2008:

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Obama took a lot of heat for not calling out Romney for his lies in the first debate.  I’m betting that those same people screaming for “lie free” debates are going to be relatively quiet about the fact that their Obama is a liar as well.

But that, I AM certain of.

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Posted in Uncategorized